


she smells like lemongrass and sleep

by soislibre



Series: AFTG Bingo 2020 [4]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Imprinting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, F/M, Imprinting, its KIND OF SOULMATES let me be, mentions of eating disorders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:21:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25598728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soislibre/pseuds/soislibre
Summary: For a world where finding your soulmate is possible, it’s not particularly common.
Relationships: Allison Reynolds/Renee Walker (All For The Game)
Series: AFTG Bingo 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1815703
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11
Collections: All For The Game Bingo 2020





	she smells like lemongrass and sleep

**Author's Note:**

> surprise bitch bet you thought youd seen the last of me
> 
> [title](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpg3gtwepSs)

For a world where finding your soulmate is possible, it’s not particularly common. It doesn’t happen every day, it doesn’t happen for everyone. Most people don’t even bother caring about it, because there’s no way to know who their One is or how to find them. There are no marks; there’s no words or colours, no timers or invisible threads drawing them together. When the chances are that limited, there’s no real point in hoping. All you get is disappointment. And no one needs to find their One to be happy, anyway. It’s not the kind of situation where any other relationship is unfulfilling, because that would be amazingly unfair, and the universe isn’t that cruel, not really. People are more than happy to dance through life, date and love and marry as if their soulmate didn’t even exist. It works, life continues, and when a news story appears about another imprinted couple who’ve crossed countries, overcome impossible odds and ended up at each other’s door, everyone else will sigh and think _lucky them_ and then carry on.

Only romantics actually wonder about what it would be like to imprint on somebody. To see someone and have their whole world fall out from under their feet until the only thing holding them in place is a stranger whose name they don’t even know yet. For some that’s beautiful, for most it’s just a possibility, and for a select few it’s a nightmare. There are always people who don’t think they’re worth the unconditional love that kind of bond offers up. They don’t bother to look, they don’t want to look, and they sure as hell don’t want to be found. Being found means being known, and if they’re unknowable, they’re untouchable. They want to be unattainable.

The problem arises when those people are found.

If she were to look up the word unattainable in the dictionary, Allison knows she would find a picture of herself. She’s the picture of blonde, polished perfection. She refuses to make eye contact with people she doesn’t find interesting or attractive. It’s something she’s cultivated for years; a Reynolds doesn’t ask for attention. They just get it.

Even the “unpleasantness” can’t dull her shine. Or rather, not entirely. Rather than perfect and unattainable, Allison is tarnished. She’s interesting, but not terrifying. It’s both unfair and a relief, because it means that people actually speak _to_ her rather than _through_ her. It doesn’t mean she listens. It’s just a nice change.

When she tells her parents she wants to play Exy, the reaction is stunningly bad. It’s also exactly what she expected. When she’d left hospital, stronger and more determined than ever, they’d assumed things would be _normal_ again. She can appreciate that it sucks for them to find out that their normal isn’t going to be hers anymore. She doesn’t want to take on the family business, because she couldn’t care less about it. Why should she? It’s hardly her fault. She doesn’t think her parents give a shit either, but the difference is that she has something she actually likes, and all they like to do is, well. She doesn’t actually know what they like to do. If they were any other family, that would be cause for concern, but in the Reynolds family, it means that her parents have done a great job of pretending they’re not actually parents. 

She spends exactly no time looking at schools. Palmetto State approaches her, and as shitty as their team is, it’s tiny, she’s guaranteed to be on the court, which means she knows she has a decent chance of being noticed if the Foxes can ever pull their shit together.

She doesn’t meet the rest of the team until she arrives in September. She’s fine with that. If she’d met half of them before, she probably wouldn’t have signed the contract. As it is, it’s kinda too late by the time she’s moved in. Her room has three beds in it. Already that’s weird to her. Allison has never shared a room, not really. Now there are three people in one room and she hasn’t met the other two but she’s not exactly eager to.

She’s perched on the small island in the kitchen, sipping a coffee and scrolling through her phone, when a door down the hall bangs open. It shakes the wall with its force. When she looks up, one eyebrow carefully arched, she meets the incredibly pissed gaze of a tall brunette. He eyes her up and down, his lip curling into a sneer, then turns on his heel and stalks out of the room again. _Charming._

“You met Seth,” an amused voice says a few moments later. It’s not a question. Allison glances away from her phone again, fully prepared to roll her eyes. The girl in front of her has short dark hair and she notes how small she is. Her eyebrows are pinched together but when she smiles, it’s sweet and her teeth are dazzlingly white against her dark skin. They’re probably naturally that nice. Allison is kind of jealous of that. Her crowns were _expensive._

“Tall, dark, angry? Seems like a great guy.” The girl laughs and sticks her hand out. Allison shakes it delicately as she looks her up and down again. 

“Dan Wilds. I think you’re my roommate.” Of course Allison knows Danielle Wilds. The first female captain in Class I NCAA Exy isn’t someone who flies under the radar. If Allison were anyone else, she might be star-struck.

“Allison. Reynolds.” There’s a moment of recognition in Dan’s eyes, and then she blinks it away like nothing ever happened.

“Nice to meet you. Is Renee here yet?” Allison shakes her head, uncrossing her legs and crossing them the other way. 

“Not as far as I know.”

Dan circles behind the island Allison is sitting on to start the coffee maker. She leans her elbows on the counter, cranes her head up to meet Allison’s eyes, and picks at a raw edge on her thumbnail. “What do you play again?”

For a second, she’s disarmed by the question. When she says her surname, questions about her Exy position aren’t usually the first things on people’s lips. “Uh. Dealer.” Dan nods thoughtfully.

“Defensive, right?” 

Allison knows Dan’s specialty is offensive. That joke’s been made many times on many different platforms. But she also knows the girl is good at Exy and she’s damn well proved it. So she has a decent amount of respect for her, honestly. 

She accepts the coffee Dan passes her without a word. Once upon a time she might have hesitated, run through numbers in her head, but now she takes it and she doesn’t put milk in it but then she never did in the first place.

Dan sits next to her on the counter and they sip in companionable silence. When their cups are empty, they put them in the sink to wash later and return to their room. There’s a new suitcase in the corner of the room, and a duffle bag on the third bed, but Renee is nowhere to be seen. She watches idly as Dan finishes unpacking and talks her through the rest of the team at the same time. It takes less time to talk about the team than to unpack. She talks about Seth - hot but a shithead; Matt - tall and dumb; a group she not at all affectionately calls the monsters. Allison’s not anxious to meet those ones.

She zones in and out while Dan talks, thinking about the two she’s already met. Seth is hot, sure, but his attitude sucks. Allison’s tolerance for that kind of bullshit is low enough already. Most likely it’ll hit a new bottom the longer she’s around him. She doesn’t know Matt yet. Dan has plenty to say not just about him, but about the other group yet to arrive. A tirade about some guy called Andrew is cut short by the door opening, and Allison looks up from her phone. The first thing she sees is white hair.

Then her heart stops in her chest. It’s not… it’s not unpleasant. She thinks she might like it any other time. But as it is, she’s too busy drinking in every single detail of the scene - the _person_ \- in front of her, and she has no idea how to handle the fact that her blood has just _stopped_ rushing through her veins. The ground falls away, the bed falls away, and the only thing that anchors her to the earth isn’t gravity, it’s the small girl in the doorway.

The girl who, going by the look on her face, is feeling the exact same way. They look at each other in silence, both refusing to speak for fear of breaking the silence. So Dan does. She glances between the two of them, eyebrow arched, then coughs delicately and hip checks the girl out of the way so she can sidle out of the room. “Renee, this is Allison. Allison, Renee. Play nice.” And she’s gone.

Allison stares. Renee stares.

“It’s you?” Allison says finally. Her voice is shriller than she really means it to be. Embarrassingly, it’s kind of panicked. She’s not too proud to admit that. Or, like, she is, but she doesn’t have a choice because Renee’s eyebrows twitch up and she smiles.

“It’s me?” she answers, pitching it up into a question like Allison had done. She’s making fun of Allison. It’s not as annoying as it should have been. Would have been. Allison’s too overwhelmed. There’s a lot going on in her head, but at the same time there’s nothing. She wants to reach out. She wants to touch Renee. She wants to run, throw herself out the window, drop out, change her name, and never see this girl again. 

She stays put, and Renee approaches her very carefully. She climbs up to sit on the top bunk opposite Allison’s bed, and pushes the sleeves of her sweater up to her elbows. 

Her forearms? Strong. Allison? Weak.

“You’re feeling it too, right?” Renee asks her gently as she leans forward, elbows on her knees.

“I’m feeling a lot.” Allison rolls her eyes. The floor has, at least, returned. It’s safely underneath her again. Makes her feel a little more stable even while she’s sinking into Renee’s eyes.

Renee slides off her bed again with a sigh and sits next to Allison. “It doesn’t mean marriage.”

Allison is grateful for that, because that’s kinda what she’d been afraid of it meaning. Every story about a couple who find each other like this ends in a rushed wedding and that’s just not her style. Not at all. The fact that both of them are at Palmetto means that they need to take their time. They need to adjust and get used to each other, because it’s hard to love a soulmate before you like them, even when you know you’re _supposed_ to.

She doesn’t say that though. Maybe she doesn’t need to. Renee _is_ her soulmate, right? She should know. But also, Allison doesn’t admit that kind of stuff; never has, never will.

She leans back on her hands and tips her head backwards. Renee rests one hand on the bed, sweeping the other through her short hair as she sighs. For a second, they sit silently. 

Then she twitches her pinkie out, just far enough to brush it against Renee’s. It’s gratifying that Renee doesn’t flinch, just links them together. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Renee smile.

She decides she likes this girl. She decides maybe being known isn't going to be so bad.

**Author's Note:**

> man, ive been holding off on posting the last 2 bingo pieces bc i wanted to finish love looks better. sadly that monster keeps growing so here i am.
> 
> [yell at me to Do Better](https://jeanmoreaun.tumblr.com/)


End file.
